Time feels like it speeds up around this time of the year, doesn’t it? With festivals like Divali and Eid just past, and Christmas festivities to come, we all look forward to celebrating in this, the darkest time of the year.

And in the meantime, there are all those projects to be finished before the deadline of the holiday season. Sometimes we can feel hounded by time itself – there’s just not enough of it between now and the end of the year!

One of the most powerful ways to work with a client who wants to genuinely change the culture and leadership of their organisation, is to design a rich mix of 1:1 learning with a series of short punchy workshops, and plenty of practise in between.

I have worked in this way with several clients recently, and seen some fabulous results. (One recent client said that they thought their move several places up the Sunday Times “Best Places to Work” this year was in part as a direct result of the leadership programme we designed for them!)

For a while now I have been working with a 360 degree feedback tool I designed. It’s for leaders who want to do a deep review of their leadership approach and style, and explore the impact they have on others.

The first stage is a “Reflection” form – a series of questions and a checklist of detailed leadership competencies in what for me are the 4 core areas for leadership: Vision, Engagement, Resilience and Drive.

One of the big influences on my leadership coaching and development is “Systems Thinking.” The origins of this powerful approach are from the 1970’s and from the world of therapy, but there has been some wonderful development of this work more recently to apply it to the complex systems that are the organisations we work in.

Recently I ran a three day workshop for leaders who wanted to power up their coaching skills.

One of them said that he wished he had developed “coaching” as a leadership style he could draw on, years before, when he was leading his organisation through rapid change. Although in many ways a successful leader, he recognised that if he had been able to “let go” and see that his micromanaging was not improving the quality of what was being delivered, but actually slowing it down, he would have had a much more relaxed time of it.

As a response to clients’ tightened budgetry belts, and as a cost effective alternative to 1:1 leadership coaching, I have found that offering leaders in organisations action learning leadership has been very well received.

A small group of leaders with some common learning aims form an “action learning set”, and we coach on some agreed common leadership themes, which tie closely into the organisations’ leadership competency framework.

Organisations need leaders who are adept at working with people who seem different from themselves – often due to increased work with partners and businesses outside the UK. This allows leaders to truly live their brand as an employer who values diversity.

What is it like to be an inclusive leader – ie someone who really enjoys – and has great skill at – leading a diverse team? What are the skills involved? Is it something you could aspire to being?

My core passion is working with leaders and their teams – whether global business leaders or entrepreneurs, supporting them as they move up onto a wider stage where some very new skills are required of them.

As they step onto that stage, their abilty to relate to people both emotionally and socially moves up their performance agenda, while actually the technical skills that got them there in the first place may well not be needed in the same way again.

So it’s not just about tacking on a few additional skills – it’s a real shift in identity.

Coaching is more and more being acknowledged as a core ability for outstanding leadership. Here is Alan Lafley, outgoing CEO of P&G, on his coaching leadership style, which he believes has helped him achieve transformative change at P&G:

“….Coaching at P&G doesn’t mean coddling. On the contrary, Lafley demands that his managers take on the responsibility of making tough strategic choices. “Most human beings and most companies don’t like to make choices. And they particularly don’t like to make a few choices that they really have to live with. They argue, ‘It’s much better to have lots of options, right?'”